GOPAL’S MOTHER ‘And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.’ Gospel According to St. Matthew 18.5.
Those who have read Sister Nivedita’s masterpiece The Master I saw Him are very familiar with the name of ‘Gopaler Ma.’ In that fervent style peculiar to herself, the Sister says: ‘Gopal’s Mather was an old woman. She had already been old, fifteen or twenty years before, when she had first walked over, one day at noon, from her cell at Kamarhatty, by the Ganges-side to see the Master in the garden at Dakshineswar. He received her, so they say, standing at his door, as if he expected her. And she, whose chosen worship had been for many years Gopala, the Baby Krishna, the Christ-child of Hinduism, saw him revealed to her, as in a vision, as she drew near. How true she always was to this! Never once through all the years that followed, did she offer salutation to Sri Ramakrishna, who took her thenceforth as his mother. And never have I known her to speak of our Holy Mother, save “My daughter-in-law”’. Sri Ramakrishna used to say: “First obtain bhakti and all other things shall be added unto you. Devotion is like a string in the hands of the
